[ Back ] Virtual Diplomacy Series Released Online August 2005 | VDS No. 16 Net Diplomacy III: 2015 and Beyond Barry Fulton, Editor The views expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect those of the United States Institute of Peace, which does not advocate specific policies. I am probably going to bring in some of my colleagues from that world I was in for the last seven years--Steve Case, Michael Bell, Andy Grove, a few other people like that--who really know what they’re talking about ... to come in and find out what we can do. —Secretary of State Colin Powell, January 25, 2001 Introduction As the Communist Revolution ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the Information Revolution reached the tipping point as corporations embraced the new technologies. The U. S. Department of State, while marking the end of the Cold War, continued to be guided by practices more fitting to an earlier age. Indeed, decision making has become more centralized, access more restricted, and information flow more inhibited. This state of affairs has been documented by several studies, including Reinventing Diplomacy in the Information Age, Equipped for the Future: Managing U.S. Foreign Affairs in the 21st Century, and America’s Overseas Presence in the 21st Century. In the first week of the Bush administration, former Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci presented to Secretary of State Colin Powell a “resources-for-reform” proposal calling for the Department of State to undertake fundamental change, including upgrading information technology and adopting modern management practices. Cosponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the proposal, State Department Reform, represents a consensus among research institutions, scholars, and professionals that the time has come for action. “In short,” the task force said, “renewal of America’s foreign policy making and implementing machinery is an urgent national security priority. The National Intelligence Council invited a group of scholars to look ahead and describe the security environment of 2015. Their discerning report, entitled Global Trends 2015: A Dialogue About the Future with Nongovernment Experts, was published in December 2000. The panel concluded that “diplomacy will be more complicated. Washington will have greater difficulty harnessing its power to achieve specific foreign policy goals: the U.S. Government will exercise a smaller and less powerful part of the overall economic and cultural influence of the United States abroad.” In July 2001 iMP: The Magazine on Information Impacts invited twenty-three American and British experts to examine the Global Trends study and imagine the state of diplomacy in 2015. How will it look? And how will we get there? Among the writers, broad agreement exists that diplomacy must change if it is to continue to be an effective element of statecraft in a world endangered by a panoply of destabilizing threats. They also agree that even as information technology wisely deployed is a necessary element of a new diplomacy, profound changes in its culture and practice will be required to restore its primacy by 2015. And practically everyone agrees that the public dimension of diplomacy increases in importance as the world’s population becomes more engaged. Beyond Foreign Ministries Henry E. Catto, Jr. reminds us that there are certain core diplomatic practices that must be retained, but urges more attention to public diplomacy and an appreciation of “soft power” as a central element of international relations. Anthony C. E. Quainton posits that diplomats must assume the role of “change insurgents,” thereby creating a state of dynamic turbulence that will lead to the internal reform of current diplomatic practices. Jeffrey R. Cooper explains the external forces that are driving changes in diplomacy: political revolution, economic revolution, and the information revolution. Brian Hocking insists that we differentiate the mechanisms and processes of diplomacy to resolve the apparent paradox between expanding and contracting diplomatic requirements. Sheryl J. Brown and Margarita S. Studemeister describe the diffusion of diplomacy whereby academics, corporations, nongovernmental organizations, and others assume traditional diplomatic roles through the power of networking. Howard Cincotta writes that effecting the transition from the hierarchical, closed, and classified nature of modern diplomacy to the openness, flexibility, and speed of postmodern diplomacy is one of the chief challenges for the diplomatic community. Beyond Old Borders Donna Oglesby, pointing to the limits of military power in dealing with fragmenting states, persuasively calls for cultural dialogue as a necessary precondition for solving the emerging problems of the twenty-first century. Larry Seaquist writes that the diplomat of 2015 must be prepared to build peace in a world where local conflict and civilian warriors threaten the stability of communities and nations. Jody K. Olsen and Norman J. Peterson urge that technology be used to complement, but not replace, educational and cultural exchanges. Mark Leonard and Liz Noble suggest that traditional diplomacy needs to be broadened beyond foreign ministries to address increasingly important publics throughout the world. These five authors would agree that creating trust underpins diplomacy in 2015. Walter R. Roberts argues that state broadcasting will continue as an element of public diplomacy in 2015, but believes the array of U.S. government services today is duplicative, expensive, and even counterproductive. Adam Clayton Powell III, celebrating the breadth and reach of the Internet, hints that state-sponsored broadcasting may become irrelevant. The Internet is the wild card in 2015, Robert Coonrod points out. He suggests that traditional government broadcasters will regard radio as a means to counter specific challenges or threats, but will abandon the practice of projecting their societies and cultures. 2015 and Beyond Charles A. Schmitz, writing with savage wit, describes the diplomatic environment of 2015, enhanced by technology and constrained by politics. If this mind-stretching disquisition strikes you as far-fetched, Richard P. O’Neill goes out on a technological limb as he considers what 2015 may offer from three categories of predictive structure: the linear extrapolation, the missed discontinuity, and the breathless proclamation. And Steven Livingston shows how high-resolution public satellite imagery will further change the diplomatic landscape by introducing still another dimension of transparency in international relations. Stephanie Smith Kinney calls for a new culture of diplomacy that puts as much primacy on action as it does on observation and reflection. John Hemery says that training diplomats for 2015 must reflect changes in the role of foreign ministries and give greater attention to interaction in cyberspace, public diplomacy, international financial markets, and results-oriented management. Wilson Dizard, Jr. asserts optimistically that the State Department is about to witness a dramatic upgrading of its information resources; the new agenda of diplomacy-from trade issues to human rights-he writes, is being increasingly shaped by the information revolution. Jamie F. Metzl, insisting that overclassification of information has become a national liability in the Information Age, calls for a new diplomacy that replaces an obsession with secrecy with a culture of openness. As the revolution in military affairs moves ahead at the Pentagon, a counterpart revolution in diplomatic affairs must surely follow. Not just desktop Internet connections, but a bottom-to-top overhaul of the conduct of diplomacy. Not just in Foggy Bottom, but throughout the democratic world. If the vision of the year 2015 represented in this edition of iMP is on target, it is past time for the revolution to begin. Released: July 23, 2001 iMP Magazine: http://www.cisp.org/imp/july_2001/07_editorial.htm (c) 2001. Barry Fulton. All rights reserved. A Vision of an American Embassy in 2015: A Disquisition in Three Acts and Six-and-a-Half Sets of Premises ‘Frankly, Mr. Secretary, none. Only half a dozen of our folks come to the chancery regularly anyhow. All are equipped to do their jobs on the move, and they stay in good touch with each other and with me through Bladders.’ —Charles A. Schmitz Charles A. Schmitz, a retired U.S. Foreign Service officer who served in Morocco, Japan, Panama, and Germany, is an international business consultant and president of the Global Access Institute in Washington, D.C. He directs a graduate course on international relations at Yale University, including a module entitled “Digital Diplomacy.” Schmitz invites your e-mail comments to: [email protected] Premises Set I: Modern American embassies have been built and staffed according to dozens of premises. Among them are the following: 1. The U.S. government ought to have diplomatic relations with the central governments of all recognized states, (barring warlike relations, in which diplomacy is judged to be too dangerous or connoting a blessing). Indeed new and “developing” countries consider foreign embassies a mark of their arrival as independent states. 2. The government’s people in foreign locations most important to the United States live and work in the city designated as their “capital”. 3. That which is done by national governments is important to the U.S. government. 4. The U.S. government is the most important